Great news. VCU is a clear upgrade over Charlotte. This further establishes that the A-10 is the destination for most of the best non-BCS programs. Hopefully Creighton will take notice and be poised to join if/when UMass leaves.

Yeah, if we can't have Creighton, then I'd have to be selfish and advocate for Belmont. VCU doesn't do much for me, but it probably strengthens the conference. If Butler and VCU can retain there coaches for a few more years, I may sing a different tune.

Great news. VCU along with Butler are two strong additions and programs that should both be good for the forseable future. Both Brad Stevens and Shaka Smart are great young coaches that look like they will be at those programs for a long time. They have both turned down multiple jobs from the "BCS" leagues and seem to be following the same path as Mark Few at Gonzaga.

I don't mind having two teams in Richmond since they are both good programs. Chris Mooney is doing a good job with the Spiders and is another quality A10 coach that turned down job offers from the "big" conferences.

I do hope that if we stay with 14 teams the A10 lets us play Butler home and away every year. They are now our closest conference opponent and playing twice per year would be a great way to build a rivalry. X and Dayton will always be each others main rival so I really hope we can build a good rivalry with BU.

Meh. It will be interesting to see if Shaka is actually the coach in 2013.

Pretty sure almost every BCS job that has opened up in the last two years has wanted to hire him and he is still at VCU. Illinois went afer him hard last year and I beleive he grew up in that state and he still turned them down. Smart is making good money with a long term contract at VCU and seems to be happy building his program there. I guess the real challenge will be when one of the basketball blue blood programs open up. A program like Kentucky, Indiana, North Carolina, Duke, Kansas, or UCLA at this point are the only jobs I could see him potentially leaviing for.

VCU has had a nice run beginning with Capel, through Anthony Grant and now Shaka. The school has shown a commitment to building a good basketball program and their move to the A-10 reinforces that. Charlotte has become more interested in recent years in building a second rate football program. Butler and VCU earned a lot of respect with their Final 4 trips. This is great news for the league.

Personally, I am excited to see them come into the conference. And, as ACE pointed out, they have been a solid program for a while now and have had tourney appearances under their last 3 head coaches. They immediately improve the competitive profile of the conference, just as Butler did. Any negatives that were pointed out are mitigated by the positives they bring.

While I am still not crazy about adding another Richmond school - not sure how that helps with improving the conf's footprint for TV but what is done is done - at least they did not add a rummy school.